Thanks to one of my favorite blogs for posting this video and making me aware!

Here is the speech transcript:

King Lear, late at night on the cliffs asks the blind Earl of Gloucester
“How do you see the world?”
And the blind man Gloucester replies “I see it feelingly”.
Shouldn’t we all?
Animals must be off the menu – because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of Despair.
I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before.
In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.
Their cries were the cries of my father.
I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.
And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.
Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco.

CO2, Methane, and Nitrous Oxide from the livestock industry are killing our oceans with acidic, hypoxic Dead Zones.
90% of small fish are ground into pellets to feed livestock.
Vegetarian cows are now the world’s largest ocean predator.
The oceans are dying in our time. By 2048 all our fisheries will be dead. The lungs and the arteries of the earth.
Billions of bouncy little chicks are ground up alive simply because they are male.
Only 100 billion people have ever lived. 7 billion alive today. And we torture and kill 2 billion animals every week.
10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one species.
We are now facing the 6th mass extinction in cosmological history.
If any other organism did this a biologist would call it a virus.
It is a crime against humanity of unimaginable proportions.
The world has changed.
10 years ago Twitter was a bird sound, www was a stuck keyboard, Cloud was in the sky, 4 g was a parking place, Google was a baby burp, Skype was a typo and Al Kider was my plumber.
Victor Hugo said “there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come”.

Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.
There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world.
That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!
Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.
Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.
Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!
They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.
Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.
Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it.
Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry.
It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.
1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.
Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.
Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.
We are facing the perfect storm.
If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.
But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry.
The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it.
George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

This is the Swiss Army Knife of the future – it solves our environmental, water, health problems and ends cruelty forever.
The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. This cruel industry will end because we run out of excuses.
Meat is like 1 and 2 cent coins. It costs more to make than it is worth.
And farmers are the ones with the most to gain. Farming won’t end. It would boom. Only the product line would change. Farmers would make so much money they wouldn’t even bother counting it.
Governments will love us. New industries would emerge and flourish. Health insurance premiums would plummet. Hospital waiting lists would disappear.
Hell “We’d be so healthy; we’d have to shoot someone just to start a cemetery!”
So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:
1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?
2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.
Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

The peace map is drawn on a menu. Peace is not just the absence of war. It is the presence of Justice.
Justice must be blind to race, colour, religion or species. If she is not blind, she will be a weapon of terror. And there is unimaginable terror in those ghastly Guantanamos.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we wouldn’t need this debate.
I believe another world is possible.
On a quiet night, I can hear her breathing.
Let’s get the animals off the menu and out of these torture chambers.
Please vote tonight for those who have no voice.
Thank you.

Monday, June 4, 2012

I just watched an undercover video showing the cruel treatment of animals at an auction in California. It led to 21 criminal cruelty charges. And that was just the auction house. This video, of course, is nothing compared to the realities at slaughterhouses around the country (and the world). It breaks my heart.

Just a reminder that every year 10 billion (yes, that's a "b") animals are raised and killed for food in the U.S. The cruelty and suffering these animals endure at all stages of their short, painful lives is just not acceptable. The system we have in place is not working. Animals are treated as unfeeling machines to be abused and mistreated by humans at our whim and for our profit. The image of Old MacDonald's farm is not a reality. Sadly, far from it.

Please remember you have a choice in participating - or not -in this current system every time you pick up your fork. If you don't already, please consider eating vegetarian one (or more!) days a week.

Today is Monday. - Meatless Monday! - so why not start today? Every time you choose to forgo animal products you are saving the life of an animal and reducing the the suffering of another little being in this world. And you are doing something good for your health and the environment!

Monday, May 28, 2012

Take a couple minutes to watch funny lady Ellen chat with Rachel Ray about the benefits she and Portia have experienced from eating vegan. Did you know that Rachel eats vegetarian a couple nights a week? Love that!

Friday, May 25, 2012

The other day I found myself waiting for a table at a bar with a friend. Eventually we spotted some people who were just paying their bill and leaving so we swooped in and sat down at the table before the waiter had a chance to clean it off. There was a plate of chicken wings with four wings left.

Four little wings.

I've made the choice to be vegan so obviously I'm not a fan of eating meat. However, it saddens me in a different way when I see little body parts so casually left behind. It troubles me deeply that any animal has to go through suffering and fear to satisfy a temporary craving, but it feels even worse when that animal endures this fate only to be thrown in the garbage.

This holiday weekend, I encourage everyone to eat consciously. Choose food that aligns with your values and then eat it with love and peace in your heart.

The book tells the real-life story of the people who pull off daring rescues of laboratory test animals and the whistleblowers inside who help them.Yes, these folks are usually members of PETA, which often is perceived as a radical organization - probably because they usually take radical action. I used to think they were extreme troublemakers too. But now I think they are on the right track. Because it's the video footage from these rescues that brings issues to light and causes the (rightful) public outrage.

Picture this - Britches, a baby macaque monkey who had his eyes stitched closed and some kind of electrical box put on his head. Or the mice who are forced to swim to thepoint of exhaustion or drowning. Or the other monkeys kept in steel cages so small they repeatedly banged their heads against the wall.

Kind of a PR nightmare for the tormenters, no? That's how it works. Shining a light on this activity forces corporations to find better ways of testing. And by "better" I mean cheaper, more effective and more applicable to humans. I know, it doesn't make sense that they even bother with the animal testing. But apparently old habits, no matter how cruel and unnecessary, can be hard to break.

Thanks Bill, for spreading the word. And thanks to PETA for doing the things that the rest of us are afraid to.

Here's another picture of a Macaque monkey in a better situation who befriended a kitten and is caring for it like a baby. Apparently even monkeys know how to behave when we humans fall short.

About Me

This blog is for the peaceful at heart who know that the choices we make every day matter. From the food we eat and the clothes we wear to the thoughts we think. I share my discoveries of chic, cruelty-free fashion, vegan food and all sorts of other fun things. So you can vote for peace with fork, your wallet - and your big, beautiful heart.